Re: CSP and inline styles

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Ian Melven <imelven@mozilla.com> wrote:
> As part of our work to implement the CSP 1.0 spec in Gecko (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=663566),
> we have been looking at what we need to do to block inline styles (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763879)
>
> The reason for this post is that we need more discussion among the WG (and possible clearer guidance in the spec) as to what
> threats blocking styles is intended to address and what threats are considered out of scope for this
> restriction (eg if it's intended to stop data exfiltration).

The main threat we're trying to protect against is attackers who can
inject markup into a document using CSS3 attribute selectors to steal
passwords (and other data) store in input element attributes.  Also,
we're worried about future evolution of CSS increasing this risk.

> Additionally, we could really use clarification in the spec as to what methods of applying CSS should be blocked in a CSP 1.0 compliant UA
> (and this would hopefully lead to more consistency across implementations).
>
> Previously on this mailing list, we discussed blocking mechanisms that apply CSS that
> are equivalent to inserting and parsing a <style> node in the DOM.
>
> Specifically, we considered the following list of ways to apply CSS:
> (from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763879#c26)

I've taken the liberty of re-arranging the order of your list.

> * doc.body.appendChild(doc.createElement("style"));
> * doc.body.setAttribute("style", "...");
> * doc.body.innerHTML = "<style>...</style>";

These are blocked.

> * doc.body.style.background = "...";
> * bgcolor attributes appearing in the markup
> * <font> elements appearing in the markup
> * doc.body.appendChild(doc.createElement("font"));
> * doc.body.bgcolor = "...";

These are not blocked.

> However, in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763879#c33 Jonas points out:
>
> "The data-stealing attack described in the article below could be done using just element.style.background = ...;

That's correct, but we need to stop somewhere.  An attacker who can
inject markup into a document cannot add code that assign arbitrary
values to element.style.background.  The page needs to do something
more to be vulnerable.

It's not entirely obvious to me where to draw the line as to what to
block.  The spec draws it in an easy-to-define place that also
mitigates the largest risks.  We could mitigate progressively obscure
risks by blocking more things, and we could potentially block less
things without getting into too much security trouble.

> So while it might "feel" safer, it's arguably not.
>
> http://scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.com.es/2009/12/generic-cross-browser-cross-domain.html "

It doesn't have anything to do with "feeling" safer.  It has to do
with being beyond the capabilities of the attacker we're trying to
stop.

> There is more discussion in bug 763879 about what mechanisms in the above list are equivalent and what
> the important distinction when evaluating these mechanisms is, and if basing it around if the
> mechanism is equivalent to inserting a <style> node goes far enough - my personal opinion agrees with a
> statement from Jonas : "The critical distinction isn't whether you have to call a JS function in
> order to launch the attack. The distinction is whether that function parses strings into harmful content."

I disagree with Jonas.  An attacker who can inject markup cannot call
JavaScript functions (at least when CSP stops such an attacker from
injecting script).  Therefore, attack vectors that require calling
JavaScript functions are beyond the attacker's capabilities and
therefore less worrisome.

Adam

Received on Monday, 22 October 2012 22:29:23 UTC